Friday, August 01, 2014

Supernatural Friday: House of Headstones and More.....

It can be fascinating, but it can be
strange too. Most homes are built of lumber and brick. But others are made most
differently.

Like a house of tombstones. Like the one
in Petersburg, Virginia that will be my future nonfiction ghost book, Haunted
Peterburg and the Ghosts of the Tri-Cities Area from Schiffer Publishing. Builtin the 1930s, the builder used
tombstones from Poplar Civil War Cemetery, which is in Dinwiddie County.
This house’s exterior walls are fashioned from the 2000 marble tombstones of
Union soldiers killed during the Siege of Petersburg.
Sixty thousand people were killed during the siege, which lasted ten months
during 1864-65.

To save money, the city sold these
tombstones to the builder, O. E. Young, for forty-five dollars. The ones used
to build the house were put in facing inwards, and then Young plastered over
the inscriptions. He even made the walkway out of the tombstones too, facing
down. Wooden markers were placed upon the graves at Poplar Grove at first. But
wood is not a very durable material and the weather destroyed them over a
couple of years. In 1873 the government replaced them with marble ones. The soldiers’
names, states, and ranks were inscribed upon these new markers. Poplar Grove is
the only cemetery in a national park where the tombstones lie flat. Besides
being creepy enough to live in a house of gravestones, the place is also
haunted. To find out more about it, you will have to buy the book when it is
finally released, to learn more.

To save money, the city sold these tombstones to the
builder, O. E. Young, for forty-five dollars. The ones used to build the house
were put in facing inwards, and then Young plastered over the inscriptions. He
even made the walkway out of the tombstones too, facing down. Wooden markers
were placed upon the graves at Poplar Grove at first. But wood is not a very
durable material and the weather destroyed them over a couple of years. In 1873
the government replaced them with marble ones. The soldiers’ names, states, and
ranks were inscribed upon these new markers. Poplar Grove is the only cemetery
in a national park where the tombstones lie flat. Besides being creepy enough
to live in a house of gravestones, the place is also haunted. To find out more
about that, you have to buy the book when it is finally released, to learn more.

Though this is the only place made of markers from
graves I found, other materials a builder wouldn’t think of using nor ally, are
used to build buildings. More than 50,000 cans adorn John Milkovisch’s Houston home in Texas.
It also includes bottle caps, bottles
and other beer paraphernalia. The project began in 1968 when Milkovisch, a
retired upholsterer was tired of mowing grass and covered his front and back yards
with concrete, inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks and other glittery items to
create a unique lawn.
He then turned to the house and began decorating it with flattened beer cans, covering
the walls and roof, and even creating beer-can wind chimes. Garlands made of cut beer cans hanging from the roof edges not
only made the house sing in the wind, but also lowered the family's energy
bills.Today the Beer Can House is a museum. Find out more on
how you can visit it at http://www.beercanhouse.org/.

It was in Rockport,
Massachusetts,
in1922 that mechanical engineer Elias F. Stenman constructed
his two-room home, planning to insulate it with newspaper. Before long, he made
the entire house out of paper, and two years and 215 layers of newspaper later,
he moved in. At that, he went on to make all of the home’s furnishings —
including the desk and the piano — out of newspaper as well. He worked on the
project until his death in 1942. Although the frame, floor and roof are made of
wood, the rest of the home is composed entirely of newspaper, all donated by
Stenman’s friends and family. Although the Paper House is completely sturdy, it does
have to be revarnished every few years to keep it well-preserved. Of course,
you can visit it. You can learn more at http://www.paperhouserockport.com/index.html.

In the southern part of Virginia, actually in Hillsville, there’s a
house made up of all things, bottles. In 1941, pharmacist John “Doc” Hope
commissioned a builder to build for his daughter a playhouse made out of
bottles. Glass containers that had contained castor oil to soda pop were used
in construction of this place. But unlike most children’s playhouses, this one
stretched from fifteen to twenty-five feet.

Nicknamed the “House of a Thousand Headaches” due to
the wine bottles also used in its construction, unlike many homes today, this
one has stood the test of time. It is said that unlike other homes made of bottles
in the world, this one had all its bottles arranged backwards, making the inner
walls green. Green bottles form an "H" pattern (for Hope) on one of
the side walls. There is also a blue bottle chandelier.

About Me

Pamela K. Kinney is a published author of horror, science fiction, fantasy, poetry, and nonfiction ghost books published by Schiffer Publishing. Her latest fiction includes short horror stories, "Donating" in Inhuman Magazine, Issue 5 December 2011 and "Bottled Spirits" (a Predator and Editor 2012 winner and a 2013 WSFA Small Press Award runner up), “Azathoth is Here" reprinted by Innsmouth Press in Innsmouth Magazine: Collected Issues 1-4 in Kindle and ePub formats, short dark fantasy, “Devil in the Details,” included in Harboring Secrets anthology and short horror story, “Let Demon Dogs Lie” released in Southern Haunt: Devils in the Darkness anthology March 2014, and coming soon, a fantasy short story, “Weregoat” in Strangely Funny II anthology. And of course, she has her horror and dark fantasy tales collection in print and download, Spectre Nightmares and Visitations, published by Under the Moon.
She also has done acting on stage and in films, is a Master Costumer, costuming since 1972, and she even does paranormal investigating, including for DVDs for Paranormal World Seekers, filmed by AVA Productions.